Water Becomes Waves
Sound Experiences
Heartland Voyages
I hit the road early August, 2005 for my first trip cross country (the veritable “American” journey west). Hitting the high road packed with clothes and various junk for the next 2 months, including an old guitar given to me by my mother’s ex-boyfriend, I went searching for myself - for truth, for home. I went to learn more about people and experience life for a change, instead of slowly watching it move past me. I connected with various people I’ve chatted with online, providing me with a place to crash, sometimes food, and allowed me to share part of their life with me - melding place with personality. Greeted by so many incredible people on alternate paths, I learned a lot about myself watching the way they live, but I can’t really sum it up like that. Each person shared a certain form of beauty, in their own way, aside from some of the falling outs, and issues that cropped up with some.
I kept with me an audio journal, a camera (that eventually deteriorated from sun, sand, and hard rock surfaces). Travels: sometimes hard, sometimes fluid, sometimes stress and doubt, sometimes effortless and reassuring. Behind the wheel, my connection to the land – an image of the moving horizon, the slow changes of air, light, and earth. I amused myself with Joseph Campbell, some tapes from high school, singing and various moments of just spacing out. During one of my moments of self doubt, I found myself alone by a lake in Oklahoma after being forced to leave a friend’s place nearby at 5am. My first awakening happened while sleeping alone by that lake for a few hours under the full moon and canopy of stars, eventually woke to watch the sun rise over water. With the rising sun, emerged myself in water; faltering headstands for the sun and life in NYC, leaned my body next to a tree, read for a bit. Sun on wet hair and slowly drying skin, I serenaded the sun, water, air, and body with acoustic guitar, vocal chants, trance-like entering another space. Seeing horizon in the stillness of water and creating waves with guitar. Dipping my hair into it. Tree branches, leaves, ants, eternal space that seemed to stand still for moments as I awoke. Sun by side. I left that night after spending most of the day alone, meeting that friend before I left. Politics; oceans of resentment and ignorance turned to driving. Turned to desert. Turned to beauty in the stillness of it all. Of new sights…
And so the journey continues, re-awakening within me the spirit of change, of renewing friendship with guitar, with spirit energy, which I have left behind since my angsty teenage years. Through family & friends, confusion & self conscious behavior – threatening to silence an instrument of my heart…
To follow the heart whether in strings or otherwise. Focus. Breath.
Playing is like that now. Journey towards center.
In traveling, I realize what I thought of home is really in every place I journey to, every connection to people, to place, to spirit. We make home wherever we go. You helped. Solace. Assurance.
Coming back to the East, I decided to dig for some old recording of me with the guitar. Unlock the past. Find beauty. Move. Here are some of those recordings/sweet rhythms. Meter to meter.
Now, each time I pick up the guitar, I don’t know what I’m playing, but I follow the sounds, and let it lead me. Out of love. Hope. Beauty. Awakening.
Everything is incidental
Water Becomes Waves